California Reports First Drop in Street Homelessness for Years

California's governor is seizing on a rare piece of good news in a problem that has dogged his entire tenure. Gavin Newsom plans to use his State of the State address on Thursday to highlight a 9% drop in the number of people sleeping outdoors in California between 2024 and 2025, the first such decline since before he took office in 2019, Politico reports. Officials did not release an estimate of the state's total homeless population, which includes both sheltered and unsheltered people, and which has climbed for most of Newsom's time in office despite major spending on housing, treatment programs, and encampment sweeps.

The new figures are based on state data, not the federal "point-in-time" count that offers a standardized one-night snapshot and has yet to be published for 2025. That gap in long-term progress remains a political risk if Newsom seeks the White House in 2028: voters regularly rank homelessness as a top concern, and scenes of sprawling encampments have been used as a critique of Democratic leadership in the nation's most populous state. Newsom has acknowledged public frustration, calling conditions in California "a disgrace" that has persisted for "decades and decades," while arguing his administration is finally bending the trend line downward.

Newsom has pushed cities and counties to move people off sidewalks more aggressively, a strategy strengthened after a 2024 Supreme Court ruling made it easier to clear encampments—a decision he supported. His team points to thousands of encampments removed from state land and what he describes as "significant declines" in major cities. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who made reducing street encampments her central promise, has reported two consecutive years of declines in street homelessness in the city and county.

In his speech, Newsom is expected to press local officials to keep up the pace: "No more excuses—it's time to bring people off the streets, out of encampments, into housing, into treatment." The AP reports that the term-limited governor is also expected to declare that California is a blueprint for the rest of the nation, in contrast to President Trump's leadership. According to excerpts released by his office, Newsom will accuse critics of suffering from "California Derangement Syndrome."